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IDEO Hosts Event on Behavior Change: Change+

San Francisco, CA

Behavior change is more than a trend; it’s a sign of the times. Behavioral economists have joined the ranks of full-time staff at the White House, books covering the topic rank high on the New York Times best-seller list, and increasingly, businesses are asking IDEO to tackle behavior change issues, whether they are about weight loss, smoking cessation, home energy monitors, engaged banking and more.

In the spirit of experimentation, IDEO San Francisco opened its doors on January 21 for a social event called Change+. The goal was to assemble a diverse crowd, share provocations and stimulate dialogue.

IDEO Makes Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies List

Fast Company

PNC Virtual Wallet Named Edison Finalist for ‘Best New Product’

Virtual Wallet, an IDEO project with PNC Financial Services Group, has been chosen as a 2010 Edison Best New Products Award finalist. The awards celebrate the persistence and excellence personified by Thomas Alva Edison and work to increase America’s drive in the realm of innovation, creativity and ingenuity throughout the global economy.

Watch a live announcement about the awards on Discovery.com. (The dial-in question number is (240) 662-1815.)
Read more about the Edison Awards here.

Tim Brown Interviewed By The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post

Reporter Jonathan Daniel Harris interviewed IDEO’s Tim Brown at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In the article, he explains that object design has a place beside public policy and corporate social responsibility. In fact, design thinking, he says, may be necessary to enact any real change from the policy side.

IDEO Announces the Living Climate Change Video Challenge

By IDEO and Design 21

Presented by IDEO and hosted by DESIGN 21: Social Design Network, the Living Climate Change Video Challenge aims to extend the conversation about how daily life is shaped by climate change to a wide global audience. Entrants are invited to create their own 2-minute videos, which will be evaluated by an impressive panel of judges drawn from education, technology, media and government:

IDEO Method Card iPhone Application

By IDEO

IDEO Method Cards were first released in 2003 as a printed deck intended as inspiration for practicing and aspiring designers, as well as those seeking a creative spark in their work. With more than ten thousand decks in distribution, an IDEA Silver award and continued coverage in the press, we are very proud of the tool’s success in the marketplace. However, as a design tool meant to help people explore new approaches and develop their own, we realized it was time to evolve its form. We wanted to experiment with a mobile platform and make it more readily available to an ecosystem of users who can take this tool to a new level. Thus, the Method Card iPhone app.

After talking to avid Method Card users, we uncovered interesting insights when translating the cards from the physical world to the virtual world. We found that users have their favorites embedded within the 51 cards, as “go-to” sets for use in the field. In addition, with the coupling of the Voice Memos app, you can now record your observations in the field while sliding through the cards. Navigation of the cards is similar to the experience of browsing through photos in the Photos app.

The Method Card app is released as a free download with 8 cards for you to experience on your iPhone or iTouch. You can purchase the full deck of 51 cards for $4.99 within the application, eliminating the step of having to leave the app to upgrade your experience.

Inspired by playing cards, the 51 cards are classified as four suits—Ask, Watch, Learn, Try—that define the types of activities involved in using each method. Each approach is illustrated by a real-life example of how the method was applied to a specific project.

Learn: Analyze the information you’ve collected to identify patterns and insights.Look: Observe people to discover what they do rather than what they say they do.Ask: Enlist people’s participation to elicit information relevant to your project.Try: Create simulations to help empathize with people and to evaluate proposed designs.

Use the Method Card app to take a new view, to inspire creativity, to communicate with your team, or to turn a corner in your thinking.
Share what you learn at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Design Thinker

By Built by IDEO and ExperiencePoint

Innovation gives leading organizations an advantage over their competition. Design thinking is an approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit, taking a human-centered approach to enable the cultivation and development of ideas into tangible strategies and offerings. It accelerates innovation to help create better solutions for the challenges facing business and society.

Design Thinker is a simulation game created by ExperiencePoint in collaboration with IDEO that provides a meaningful experience with design thinking. Users compete to solve a realistic and complex challenge using design thinking, while engaging with the terms, techniques and thought patterns of successful innovators. Built for designers and non-designers alike, Design Thinker creates an energizing, practical and relevant learning experience that supports tangible business objectives using leading edge technology. The game can be easily integrated into leadership and management development programs, and its innovation content is readily linked to other key business learning modules and applied to action-learning projects.

Design Thinker is available in flexible formats: it is optimized for a half-day or full-day experience, and also available as an in-class exercise or online experience for remote, in-tact teams. Read more about Design Thinker here and here.

Follow a IDEO’s New York Social Media Week Event Via a Live Feed

New York, NY

This IDEO event explores the human side of social media. It’s an experiment itself, in that it uses face-to-face interactions and connections to inform the way we think about and create social media tools. See what kind of provocative ideas and dialogue emerge from the experience. Watch the live stream today.

Tim Brown Joins the Sustainability Debate at Davos

The New York Times

Columnist and panel moderator Alice Rawsthorn asks, What exactly is sustainable design? What constitutes success? And failure? On what criteria? These issues were debated at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The panel, “Design for Sustainability,” included William McDonough, the American architect who co-authored the book, “Cradle to Cradle”; Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity; and IDEO’s Tim Brown.

How Holistic Design Can Help Business

BusinessWeek

By Diego Rodriguez

In an online article for BusinessWeek, Diego Rodriguez explains that good business outcomes treat design as a holistic process that pulls in savvy marketing and research, as well as smart ideas. For him, it’s why design matters.